Jane's Stuff

Jane enjoys drawing and painting. Join her. Doodling, drawing, ART - all of it is great for brain health! Check out Jane's Youtube channel below. And if you see a picture on my blog you would like to purchase send Jane an email (or check out Jane's store).

I'm sure my 30 Day Creative Challenge Cats aren't impressing anyone out in Cyberspace, but each day I am learning something. Today I learned I do enjoy using a Prismacolor Ebony 14420 pencil to color and shade. I enjoy the black and white and gray. Maybe I will do more of that.It's a pencil that is a cross between charcoal and graphite. I don't know what it is but it is cool. Oops. It is graphite but it is called extra smooth. I looked it up. Very nice to work with!

I almost forgot about the cat today. So this was done in about a minute or even less. I took a picture of it rather than scanned it because I didn't feel like scanning it. This was a day I just drew a cat cause I had to. Sometimes creativity is like that.

Having a 30 day creative challenge does more than get you creating for 30 days. If done whole-heartedly it can help you examine yourself and understand why you do things certain ways. You can also learn to give certain things up -- or heck, there's all sorts of stuff you can learn that you weren't expecting to learn in your silly 30 day challenge.

I've learned a couple of things already:

First, I've finally let go of the left-hand magical envy. I've longed to be a left-hander. I silently would look at my hands in resignation wishing God had made me a left-hander. I always thought I'd be better at creating if I was a left-hander. And I've read how some people when they use their non-dominant hand to draw a whole new world opens up.

Nothing magical happened for me with my left hand. Cat 7 I drew with my left hand (but colored with my right) and Cat 8 is the first one in this challenge that I've used my right hand. My left hand hurts and gets tired sketching a simple cat. So I am back to my right hand and glad of it. An aside for you: I do have a dominant left eye. I found this out when I was in the Army and had such trouble shooting with my right hand. My drill sergeant said to try my left hand. Turns out I'm a south paw! So maybe I have a left-hand outlook on life. I don't know (do you know your dominant eye? It is a good thing to know when you are an artist. A quick way to figure out is look at something with both eyes. Now shut each eye separately The eye that what you saw looked the same as with both eyes is your dominant eye. The non-dominant eye view would have "moved" everything.....interestingly my oldest son is left-hander but has a dominant right eye).

I also have learned (or should say relearned) that the best way for me to draw is to just let my hand go. Quick thinking and just draw. Below are my 7 and 8 day cats.

Like I said before I started this 30 days of drawing 30 cats thing, some cats I draw I won't like. I do not like Cat 4 from Day 4. The problem is that I thought too much when I drew him. I thought, I should draw one standing up like a person. He just isn't good at all. My creative process works better if I just let my hands do the thinking and the drawing:

Cat 4. Don't like him. Sorry Dude.

I like the cat from Day 5 though. I sketched him quick. These have been sketched and in my regular daily journal (reason for the lines). Quick sketches are more my style:

Day 3 Cat 3. This is fun! Again I used my left hand. I started with the back, then drew the tail and drew counterclockwise. Hey, these cats aren't what you'd call masterpieces but I find them to be a whole lot of fun to do. You ought to start your own Creative Challenge. It's good for your brain.